


Steam

by lanyrainicorn



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Elemental Magic AU, Elements of nature, F/F, F/M, M/M, Magic, Magic-Users
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-11
Updated: 2016-09-11
Packaged: 2018-08-14 13:40:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8016160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lanyrainicorn/pseuds/lanyrainicorn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the age of four, some children present their magical element – they are able to control, summon, and manipulate an element of nature with practice and training.</p><p>Jean and Marco have known each other nearly their whole lives, the product of growing up as next door neighbors. Jean is a Wielder, and the element of fire blazes proudly through his blood and the blood of his ancestors. Marco is a Vessel, a possessor of water magic, which meshes with his calm, smart personality and sweet nature.</p><p>When Jean’s parents, the well-known and prestigious Kirschteins, get fed up with his devil-may-care attitude toward his magical abilities, they demand that he start attending the School of Magical Refinement, a special school for refining one’s magical abilities.</p><p>With no choice in the matter but reluctant to leave his best friend behind, Jean accepts his fate, under one condition - his parents must fund Marco's stay at the school as well.</p><p>Can Jean please his parents, learn to control his magic, and keep Marco in the dark about a secret he's been keeping for years?</p><p>If there's one thing that Jean knows, it's that the saying is true - if you play with fire, you're going to get burned.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Steam

**Author's Note:**

> This is something I’ve been bouncing around in my brain and working on for a couple months, and I’m really, really excited about it. I really love Jeanmarco, and I really hope that this will be the one fic that I complete and do justice even if I never write another fanfiction in my life.
> 
> I hope you all like it!

I watch him, sitting on the edge of the pier. He’s in his element, literally, and even though I’m standing too far away, I can tell he’s calm. He’s always calm, never loses his cool. I think that’s the most admirable thing about him, that he’s so patient and kind and _good_.

His hair is stuck up all over, cowlicks going this way and that way, a product of running his hands through it constantly. He does it when he’s thinking, when he’s worried, when he’s stressed out from too much schoolwork or frazzled from a spell gone wrong. It’s inky black against the dark blue of the ocean waves he overlooks, and he’d be lost in the darkness if his residual magic didn’t make the dark strands shimmer like stars. He has his back to me, and I know that even if he noticed me, he probably wouldn’t look at me – I hurt him too much, and I wouldn’t blame him if he never spoke to me again. But it’s okay, because I know his eyes well, and as much as it would hurt to lose him, I think I could deal with it as long as I could remember his eyes. They’re gentle and warm, coffee brown with flecks of caramel, alight with vigor and always full of patience and understanding. No one else ever had the patience to put up with all my shit, and I’m surprised he put up with it as long as he did. But I guess you can only push a person so far before they break.

I love him, even though I’ve never admitted it to anyone. Hell, it took me this long to admit to it myself. And I’m too scared, or maybe just too proud, stuck too deep in the ways my parents raised me, to ever be able to tell him _. “You can’t love someone like him_ ,” that’s what my parents would say if I told them. “ _A Vessel and a Wielder cannot be together – it’s wrong, it’s forbidden.”_ And that’s just the magical aspect of things. I don’t know what would be harder for me to admit to them: that I love a Vessel, or that I love a boy.

I think I’ve always loved him, even if I couldn’t always see it. He was my first real friend. How could he not be? We’ve known each other since we were kids, the product of living as closely as two neighbors can, in the picturesque suburbs, separated only by my parents’ perfect white picket fence. Funny that you can only see the chipping paint when you get too close.

He’s my best friend, the one and only person I ever felt that I clicked and connected with. The only one who understood me even when I didn’t understand myself.

It hurts beyond imagining that this is likely all over – all our history and our memories… our friendship – just because of my reckless stupidity. Maybe if I’d tried a little harder to be less of a showoff, always making an ass of myself and others, if I’d stopped to wonder if my rash decisions might hurt someone else, maybe I could’ve saved things. Salvaged the one thing in my life that I had going for me.

Marco.

I’m sorry, Marco.

For everything.

**Author's Note:**

> Come visit my [tumblr](http://lanyrainicorn.tumblr.com)!


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